1. Field
An orifice for an air conditioner is disclosed herein.
2. Background
An air conditioner is a home appliance which maintains inside air at a desired state according to intended uses and purposes thereof. The air conditioner may have an inside unit and an outside unit. The air conditioner may be a separated type air conditioner in which the inside unit and the outside unit are separate from each other, or an integrated type air conditioner in which the inside unit and the outside unit are integrated in one unit.
The air conditioner is configured to drive a refrigeration cycle. Devices which drive the refrigeration cycle generally include a compressor to compress a refrigerant, a condenser to condense the compressed refrigerant, an expander to expand the condensed refrigerant, and an evaporator to evaporate the expanded refrigerant.
To increase a capacity of the outside unit, the number of rows of an outside heat exchanger in which a refrigerant exchanges heat may be increased. At this point, to increase the number of rows of the outside heat exchanger without increasing a size of the outside unit, a gap between elements installed inside the outside unit is relatively short.
For example, in the case of the outside unit including an outside heat exchanger which is bent in a relative “”-shape, the outside heat exchanger may be divided into a heat exchange part provided at a rear side of a fan, and a heat exchange part provided at a lateral side of the fan. A motor may be provided between the fan and the heat exchange part, and thus the heat exchange part and the fan may be disposed to be sufficiently spaced apart from each other. However, such configuration may be noisy because it does not include a separate element disposed between the fan and the heat exchange part.
Moreover, an axial flow fan is typically applied to the outside unit, which generates noise. The noise generated from the axial flow fan may be classified into a tonal noise and a broadband noise. The tonal noise includes a blade passing frequency (BPF) band noise. The BPF is a noise which is generated by a periodic disturbance of air at the fan, and is determined by a rotating speed of the fan and the number of blades. The BPF has a large magnitude at a narrow frequency band, which is undesirable.
Korean Patent Application Number 10-2014-0170184, titled “Fan, and outside unit of air conditioner having the same,” describes a method which removes the BPF band noise using an expansion chamber or a resonator. Specifically, the application describes an expansion chamber or a resonator that may reduce the BPF band noise. However, with such configuration, a structure which guides the air should be additionally provided around the rotating fan. Such configuration requires that the size of the outside unit be increased, which is problematic.
To overcome the above problems, a structure which may expand the outside heat exchanger while the size of the outside unit is maintained, or a structure which prevents transmission of the noise generated from the blades of the fan is required.